Fear
by Dannee-san
Summary: Revised. Hope it makes more sense now. One-shot. This has been on my mind for a while. It really scares me. I just had to write it.


Hi. I revised this story. I thought it would make more sense now and I didn't really like the first version anyway. It didn't properly convey what I felt. I would like to restate the fact that this is real. This is me. Henc the first person.

Feedback would be nice, but is not a requirement. If you don't knwo what to make of this, I dont'blame you. It's my twisted mind coming up with al kinds of possibilities. I may be overreacting, but that is the idea of going crazy with worry and fear.

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Looking around the store, I sigh. One-piece or bikini. Normally a woman wouldn't think that long about it. I'm a bikini woman, but I have my reasons for not wearing one, namely the pink scar running along my side. It's not very noticeable, but try telling me that. I see it every day, run my fingers along it, wonder whether a small itch near it means anything.

Sometimes I can forget it, push it to the back of my mind, without even knowing I repress it. I refuse to let it dictate my life. After all it's just a thin line on my skin. If it were burn scars it would make much more sense.

I guess it's not really the scar itself that bothers me and won't let my mind rest. It's what lays behind it, why I got it in the first place.

I remember when I was told I needed the surgery. I wasn't too worried. I had been troubled by vague pains and agues for well over a year and I was fed up with it. If a three hour or-so surgery combined with a short stay in the hospital would cure me from them and let me pick up my normal routine again, I was all for it. I never doubted the doctors. I saw the test results, knew what it meant. If the circulation of an organ is down to as good as nothing, it is safe the say it is practically dead. My own body had even started to try and take out the offending object in my abdomen, surgery would only help me.

They took out my kidney rather early in the morning, ten o'clock maybe. I woke up feeling amazingly well. Long live morphine. Or whatever painkiller they had me on. It didn't matter. I felt great. Surgery had been fine, the doctor assured me, they had done well to remove the kidney. It had long since shriveled up to less that its usual size and had gotten infected. It was out, my problems were over, I could continue living.

Oh, I'll try a bikini. Screw whoever thinks walking around in one with a surgery scar is weird. Red. Bright lively red, that's what I want. Phew, I need a tan, and a bikini wax. The line is not that obvious. I guess it pails in comparison with that red color, literally.

Shall I buy it? It is a rather big step to me, practically showing to the world, or at least the beach, such an intimate part of my life. My friends know, of course. I don't really mind. It is part of me, part of what shaped me to become the woman I am today. And it wasn't exactly traumatizing, apart from those few hours when the sedative hardly worked and I was in a shit low of pain.

Man, I never knew someone could be in so much pain. Believe me, it wasn't nice. I never knew pain until that time. It was the evening after the operation. I was settled back in my room, still a bit tired from the days events. The tranquilizer wasn't completely out of my blood yet. It must have been around nine that I started feeling a little uncomfortable. I tried to fall asleep anyway, but ti only got worse. A pressure was building in my side and my back. That pressure grew to pain, until I didn't know what to do or how to lay anymore. Keeping still was terrible, moving was horrible. I was pretty much stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, but these two hurt. Like hell. I was nauseous from the anesthetic and the dry retching only pulled at my wound. The nurses had their hands full with me. They couldn't go about handing out drugs to every patient moaning in pain. They needed doctor's consent for that. So they called the anaesthesiologist who was on duty to come and take a look at me.

I wanted to scream, "What is there to look at?! I'm in pain! Do something about it!"

Luckily he dealt with the problem quickly and efficiently, giving me a shot of morphine and putting me on five ml four times a day. I was back in heaven.

I don't blame the staff for what happened. Apparently the painkiller I had been given, didn't work very well with me. That happens and it cannot be predicted. I was just glad it didn't last longer than a few hours.

I'll take it. I like this thing. It's about time I started wearing them again. It's been six years. I walk to the counter to pay. The cashier is pregnant. Six, seven months maybe. She looks radiant. Damn, I'm not gonna cry. This is stupid.

I pay and walk out fo the store and back home. I know it's strange to feel one's throat constricting when looking at a pregnant woman, but lately I've been very worried.

Okay, I'm scared shitless that just because I have one kidney, I can't have children, that my body can't handle the strain of pregnancy. I know living on one kidney is perfectly doable. There's thousands of people walking around with only one urine factory and they don't even know. But pregnancy changes a woman's body, different hormones, different quantities of hormones, more waste products in the bloodstream. I don't know if one kidney is enough for that.

It hurts sometimes, when I hear my friends talking about having children and such things. We may be a little young for it now, but we're all working on our futures so the thought of children inevitably springs to mind. Some of my friends are even trying on living together with their boyfriend.

For my future I've always envisioned myself with the average marriage and 2.4 kids. Now, that certainty is endangered. I know there are other ways of founding a family, but giving birth to a child is an unrivaled sensation.

I don't want to miss out on that.


End file.
